10 Sub-$100 Million Market Cap Cryptocurrencies to Watch in 2018

If you’re looking for one of the many articles and lists out there claiming “X token is going to 100x in 2018,” or will make you rich enough to buy 12 lamborghinis, this isn’t it. What you will find is a list of intriguing and fundamentally sound projects that are worth keeping an eye on this year.

Keep in mind, the crypto market is a fickle beast and no project is a sure shot, so conduct your own independent and thorough research before investing, and take this list as an introduction – not doctrine.

(Note: These cryptocurrencies are not structured in any specific order, and are not “ranked” by their quality or promise.)

Ticket providers and services: Future-proof, easy to integrate with existing ticketing solutions, and allows for complete control over primary and secondary ticketing market.

Why You Should Watch GET

Unlike a good portion of projects in the present crypto-sphere, the GET Protocol is actually operational, having released their first tickets on the blockchain all the way back in Q4 2016. GUTS hasn’t slowed down since, partnering with Hekwerk, an artist management group, and Modestus, a strategic management and production house, in 2017, and winning the New Dutch Wave startup competition at SXSW in March 2018.

Additionally, in a blog post from March 24, Bounty0x CEO Pascal Thellmann announced the release of embeddable bounty widgets, allowing bounty hosts to easily embed their bounty into a blog or homepage – a sizeable step towards utilizing Bounty0x as not only a platform, but a tool and network.

Bounty’s established and functional platform, coupled with its transparent team and rapidly growing user-base, make it a project worth keeping an eye on this April (and throughout 2018). To read up further on the Bounty0x roadmap, you can find information here.

3. Raiden Network ($RDN) – $82 Million

RDN Project Breakdown

If you’ve ever transacted across the Ethereum network, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered slow block confirmation times or less than ideal transaction fees, especially during the CryptoKitties peak in December 2017. At one point, CryptoKitties accounted for nearly 15% of Ethereum’s network traffic and led to a sixfold increase in pending transactions, clogging the network and causing some to wonder whether more serious, business-use applications on the Ethereum blockchain would be cast to the wayside.

Think of the Ethereum blockchain as a globally trusted, yet inefficient and expensive bank, and Raiden as its express lane, allowing customers to privately send, receive, and cash checks, all while avoiding long lines, expensive transfer fees, and lengthy wait times.

Why You Should Watch RDN

A 2016 McKinsey article placed the global payments industry at roughly $2 trillion, with an expected growth rate of 5% over a subsequent five years. Without a cost-efficient, scalable technology in place, bringing blockchain to the masses remains no more than an unrealizable dream, and our present global payment systems will remain costly, inefficient, and unbalanced.

Raiden eases such mainstream permeation, handling the latent and costly transaction times jeopardizing Ethereum’s mass adoption, and goes above and beyond the current processing framework – which handles a paltry 10–15 transactions per second (tps). Through their leverage of off-chain payment solutions, Raiden takes on the estimated 100,000,000 tps needed for a fully functioning and bottleneck-free Ethereum network, all while preserving privacy and ensuring low fees.

Feathercoin supports an average block time of about 60 seconds, which, compared to Bitcoin (8 minutes) and Litecoin (2.5 minutes), is considerably faster and tackles the infeasibility of GPU mining faced by Bitcoin. It achieves this through their NeoScrypt algorithm, which prevents ASIC miners from gaining a disproportionate advantage over GPU miners.

Why You Should Watch FTC

On March 21, 2018, Feathercoin’s Medium announced the forward push by Switzerland-based non-profit The Feathercoin Development Foundation to foster the development and acceptance of Feathercoin and serve as a catalyst for expanded community efforts and marketing. The Feathercoin Development Foundation is set to bring Feathercoin into the public eye and focus on securing partnerships and alternative clients, a much-needed step towards mass use.

Moreover, Feathercoin implements automatic checkpointing, a safety feature which prevents malicious users from forcing clients onto a different blockchain, ultimately ensuring the blockchain not fall prey to a 51% attack. Feathercoin’s automatic and advanced checkpointing makes it a secure alternative to Bitcoin and Litecoin and provides “a safe environment for miners and merchants.”

5. Storm Market ($STORM) – *$163 Million

*Note that at the time of writing, Storm had an $85 million market cap.

STORM Project Breakdown

Similar to the Google Play and Apple App Store, Storm Market is a decentralized marketplace and platform for tasks, where “Storm Makers” – parties posting tasks – and “Storm Players” – parties performing the tasks – freely create and accept tasks using smart contracts, all powered and paid for by Storm tokens.

Storm’s motto, “Earn anywhere, anytime, from any device,” refers to the wide array of potential earning opportunities for people and businesses all around the world, specifically, advertisers, gaming platforms, machine-learning companies, and recruiters, by allowing users to:

Shop to earn: Users earn Storm tokens by shopping for products and services.

Play to earn: Users earn Storm tokens by trying out new products and services, and by playing videos.

Why You Should Watch STORM

At the time of writing, Storm has over 1.4 million downloads and an extremely active, and growing, user base of over 250,000 monthly users – with the majority of user growth attributed to referrals. And, with Storm boasting 1% service fees and immediate withdrawals, it’s not hard to see why earners are beginning to choose Storm over traditional task platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr, Mechanical Turk, and TaskRabbit.

With two major exchange listings (Binance and Upbit) in March, partnerships with Bancor, Kyber Network, ZenCash, and Qtum under their belt, and advisors such as Bill Shihara of Bittrex, Guy Benartzi of Bancor, and Anthony Diiorio of Ethereum, Storm is set to increase overall usability and accessibility in 2018, and take the microfied task ecosystem by… storm.

6. Horizon State ($HST) – $21 Million

HST Project Breakdown

With confidence in traditional democratic and voting systems at an all-time low – look no further than the 2016 US presidential election – the process clearly needs a transparent and efficient overhaul to restore voters’ security and trust. Enter Horizon State, a blockchain-based community engagement and secure voting platform, enabling efficient, transparent, unforgeable vote casting and decision-making processes via distributed ledger technology.

Additionally, Horizon State restores government and organization accountability through immutable consensus, while empowering constituencies to vote smartly and effectively (via the HST token) and allowing voters to see, firsthand, the results of their decisions.

Why You Should Watch HST

Horizon State isn’t just a utopian mechanism, it’s a reality. Used by Australian information and polling platform MiVote, HST has facilitated the casting of thousands of votes and committed them to the Ethereum blockchain since early February 2017. Most notably, in December 2017, Horizon State locked down a partnership with the United Nations, with purpose of accelerating change and innovation through addressal of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

All of this, and Horizon State has yet to be listed on any of the top 25 exchanges (by volume). Post-ICO, HST has brought on 20 new employees and, most recently, appointed IT veteran Oren Alazraki as their CEO to further commercialize product offerings, develop key partnerships, and secure large-scale customer implementation.

At the heart of Electrify.Asia’s electricity ecosystem are retail electricity smart contracts – secured on the blockchain and fueled by the ELEC token – ultimately, synergizing the present energy market by cutting out excessive middlemen and inordinate transaction costs while automating contract performance and execution.

Having transacted more than 30 GWh since incorporation, with a GMV over SGD $5 million, across 12–16 Singaporean retailers, Electrify’s competitive marketplace offers an estimated 10% to 30% savings rate per energy plan, while providing a transparent, barrier-free, low-risk solution to the Asian energy sector.

Over time, both buyers and sellers “earn reputation” by fulfilling their contractual duties, resulting in certain perks, such as advanced credit and payment.

Why You Should Watch CRED

Already boasting a “killer” application built on the Verify Protocol, Verify Payments is an application solving two core issues affecting commercial transactions – lack of buyer purchase protection and delayed payments for sellers. But how does it achieve this? Through:

Improved checkout procedures

Built-in escrow

Decentralized dispute resolution

With the eCommerce retail market presently valued at nearly $3 trillion and commerce on the blockchain a growing reality, an overall bilateral protective framework and transactional safeguards both need to be ironed out before mainstream breach – all of which are remedied by Verify’s transparent and counterparty-friendly protocol.

10. Worldwide Asset Exchange ($WAX) – $75 Million

WAX Project Breakdown

Developed by the founders of the world’s leading marketplace for online video game assets, OPSkins, WAX is a decentralized platform enabling anyone to operate a “fully functioning virtual marketplace” without needing to invest in security, infrastructure, or payment processing.

WAX is set to empower millions of virtual asset traders and gamers by allowing them to create and run their own virtual stores, all while ensuring legitimacy and transparency through blockchain trust and transaction verification.

Additionally, WAX supports a DPoS consensus algorithm, where “guilds” – elected delegates – act as the confirming nodes for transactions and periodically distribute a percentage of earned fees to WAX stakeholders. Not only does a DPoS consensus allow for high network transaction throughput, it protects WAX users from unconsented regulatory interference.

Why You Should Watch WAX

Designed to serve the 400+ million strong online gamers who collect, buy, and sell in-game items, WAX cuts out the existing friction in the $50 billion virtual item market, by eliminating:

Exorbitant fees

Theft

Fraud

It’s also worth noting that WAX is building on an already functioning and thriving marketplace – albeit a centralized one – OPSkins, and has facilitated over 100+ million purchases in 95 countries since 2015.

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About Owen C.

Owen has a background in law, SEO, and legal marketing, and has been investing in cryptocurrencies since 2015. He is especially interested to see how blockchain will intersect with the law, and its effect on traditional legal assistance and services. Aside from crypto, Owen likes baseball, meat, and chess.

2 Comments

Ronny M

You should also consider Lamden (TAU) – $10mio and Blockport (BPT) – $13mio

Lamden (TAU) is about applying blockchains to enterprises and atomic swap between cryptocurrencies. So far they have been doing great and faster than the roadmap. Once it gets mass adopted by companies, the price will jump up!

Blockport (BPT) is about hybrid decentralized exchange. Currently decentralized exchangers are few. Most of them are centralized. Blockport brings something different. It allows exchange from crypto to fiat and vice versa, while still maintaining its decentralization. This type of exchange will be highly favored in near future of cryptocurrency.

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